Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/836

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
756
INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS

with honey. The leaves, boiled in gingelly oil and added to the pulverised bark, are considered a good remedy in Beri-beri. The bark is astringent, and yeilds a kind of gummy fluid. Leaves, ground and mixed with turmeric and ginger, are used as cataplasms for tumors (abscesses ?) (Drury).



N. 0. EBENACEÆ.

727. Diospyros montana, Roxb. h.f.b.l, iii. 555 ; Roxb. 415.

Vern. : — Tendu, bistend (Hind.); Neori, bhori (Bundelkhand); Hirek, keindu, temru, pasendu (Pb.) ; Makar-tendi, banda, muchi tanki, yerra goda (Tel.) ; Tembhurni, govindu, lohari (Mar) ; Tendu, bulguni, Kalagunda, (Kan).

Habitat :— From the Himalaya, throughout India (except Sindh and Northern Punjab).

A large shrub, or small deciduous tree, often spinous. Trunk usually crooked covered with dark rust colored nearly smooth bark. Branches sometimes spinescent. Branchlets and young leaves softly tomentose ; branchlets soon glabrous. Bark thin, grey or greyishblack, rough, when old, exfoliating in small scales. Wood grey, often tinged with yellow or brown, streaked with narrow patches or darker colour, especially towards the centre, but no regular ebony ; heart wood soft to moderately hard. Graham Anderson says, from Mysore, that the wood is difficult to cut with the axe (Gamble). Leaves bitter (Kanjilal), thinly chartaceous, ovateoblong, base rounded or cordate, blade 2-4in., petiole slender, 1/5-⅓in. long, secondary nerves 6-8 pair, slender ; " usually glabrous, sometimes pubescent beneath ; or on both sides, venation in conspicuous beneath " (Trimen). Flowers white, as a rule, 4-merous. Male flowers velvety, shortly pedunculate, or nearly sessile, usually 2-8fid, segments obtuse, velvety on both sides. Corolla ¼in. long, campanulate, outside glabrous or pubescent; lobes short, spreading. Stamens 16, in opposite pairs, united at the base, the outer longest. Anthers lanceolate, awned, glabrous. Female flowers axillary, solitary, drooping, on short pedicels. Calyx segments ovate, |in. long. Corolla nearly glabrous out-